WhatsApp down: App crashes, outage reported in many parts of the world

The Whatsapp messenger app is experiencing outages in many parts of the world, with frustrated users reporting difficulties in Europe, South Africa and south-east Asia, including Hong Kong.

People have been having trouble connecting to the app, as well as sending and receiving messages since 10:00 GMT, according to Down Detector, a website that oversees real-time issues and outages with all kinds of services.

A number of people took to social media to air their frustrations with the Facebook-owned service. There has been no statement from the company so far regarding the reported technical issues.

WhatsApp is a freeware and cross-platform messaging service that is used by about 1 billion people in more than 180 countries. Started as an alternative to SMS, the app joined Facebook back in 2014, but continues to operate as a separate service.